READ ALL ABOUT IT
Nothing beats a really good book, says writer DANIEL GRAY. Here are the reasons why it is a joy for ever…
ABOOK is so much more than paper and ink. Books are an escape door open to all people and the long-predicted slow death of the book now seems unlikely. Here Daniel Gray gives us an extract from his new book Scribbles In The Margins – 50 Eternal Delights Of Books. It is a reminder of why we should rejoice in the many and sometimes odd little ways in which books make us happy. We are transported backwards to when this book was first chosen and given, a story within a story, but this time we will never know the ending.
These paper time-machines shroud us in the comforting thought that a book has a life and we are now part of it. They add an extra layer of pleasure to buying an old book and create a timeless connection between you and a long-gone reader. These shelves are someone’s biography that try as you might to avoid it reveal covers by which they can be judged. This isn’t entirely unfair or sinister: what better way to decide if a new lover is worth wasting time on? Train tickets make excellent do-it-yourself bookmarks, as do leaflets which fall from newspapers, takeaway menus, gift cards from birthday present wrapping and even utility bills. Lingering through daylight and evening trials is the promise of a night-time’s rosy haven. You, your bed and a book: a heavenly retreat. This is double refuge: firstly hidden from the world beneath bedcovers, secondly, entering another between book covers. All old bookshops are united by their sacred aromas. Just as whisky develops its essence in the cask so books mature on shelves. It is alchemy. What assails you once that doorbell chime has dimmed are instantly recognisable fragrances. There is damp certainly but damp with authority rather than being a cause for concern, as in a home. It is the mustiness of words fermenting. Leather, here teetering on the brink of aniseed, there of tar, hands strong. Tobacco comes and goes as if a smoking ghost is browsing in the same sections of the shop as you. There are occasions when a book fails to put you under its spell, when the ignition splutters and fades. Your eyes move across the lines but they are shuffling rather than cantering. To finish a chapter is to arrive flustered and late having become hopelessly lost.
Then one day you just do it. You give up. You snap. It is liberation. All is clear. You see that life is too short for bad books and struggling on. You have found sweet release. There are plenty more books on the shelf. The characters you have spent time with – have shown patience towards, have shared moments tender, droll and wretched with, have thought (worried, even) about during your real-life hours – are gone. Your imaginary guests have now left.
While the book is being read it is alive. Then it is slapped shut with a yearning sigh and ruefully shelved. The front page giveth life but the last taketh it away. Now starts the search for something good enough to help us to wallow in our bereavement all over again. Each scrawl, doodle and annotation is an amiable prisoner, sleeping in pages for years until released. They are dispatches from another world, adding texture and coupling readers across time. The pencil is a mighty thing. The book is talked about on the radio and even on television. A film version, goes the rumour, is already in production. Every author’s dream is coming true. All this can be wilfully resisted, though it is a shame not to read a book just because it has begun to behave like an invading army. What is harder to avoid is a friend’s recommendation and worse still their foisting a copy on you. “It’s brilliant,” they say. “You’ll love it.” An hour spent inhaling books among their shelves with the curtains closed can summon up any of the following: wet Daily Express Monday May 22 2017 woodchips in a play-park, primary school chairs, jumble-sale trousers, garden mud, rubber bands, sawdust, spreadable cheese, ice-cream, church furniture, farmyards, varnish and paint in a shed, rusty batteries, a chemistry classroom, burnt toast and old two-pence coins.
The new book can spur strong feelings too though this time of a less reflective and more exultant nature. To prise open a weighty new hardback or fan through a paperback can be to expose ourselves to an infusion of bracing, fresh pages.
This scent feels almost beyond description because its identity as a “new book” is so tangible in its own right but is closest to vinegar on fish and chips. The circumstances are nearly always spontaneous: a lust for easy contentment, a feeble recent read that needs to be fumigated from the brain or an eavesdropped mention of the book in question. It is rare that re-reading is planned, possibly because there is a quiet mutiny residing in this delight. It defies the thirst to proceed ever forwards in the quest for reading as many works as possible and ignores ever-blossoming piles of newly-acquired titles. To discern what others are reading is to some of us impulsive. A benevolent force pulls our eyes into contact with someone else’s book cover. There are certain shades of innate literary nosiness to this, a need to snoop through the curtains. You pass judgement too and even feel that a stranger’s choice offers an insight into their character. The recipient of your unburdening must be chosen carefully: a friend who you think will comprehend your fervour and its cause rather than an old man ahead of you in the supermarket queue. There must be at least some pretence that you are enthusing for their benefit, a missionary here to spread the word, armed with a copy of the good book in your hand. The new book is a slab of paradise. There are few objects as pleasing to the touch. Its textures and edges are at once both lavish and raw and vouch for craftsmanship. Corners are tightrope-taut, covers as smooth as early-morning ice rinks. The start of the deceit is not wholly my fault. I do not go around claiming to have read words I haven’t. The fraud is induced. Others begin talking and bubbling wildly about a book, my smile and brief knowledge is taken to be deep acquaintance and then I do not have the heart to puncture their balloon.
To order a copy of Scribbles In The Margins by Daniel Gray, (Bloomsbury Publishing, £9.99) please call the Express Bookshop on 01872 562310. Alternatively send a cheque or postal order payable to Express Bookshop to Scribbles Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth, Cornwall, TR11 4WJ or order online at www.expressbookshopcom UK delivery is free.